Sometimes you just gotta get inky…

It is so true! There is nothing like good old rubber stamps, ink-pads and pattern paper to make a girl happy! I pulled out my trusty stamps from About Art Accents {my go-to stamps when I want strong design that needs no coloring} and some pretty paper from Hanko Designs {it is actually origami paper printed with pearlized ink that I did not want to waste with my poor origami skills LOL!} and my new letterpress plates from lifestyle crafts and made this set:

 

The only technology I used on this card was my Cricut and scal software to cut the cardholder box using an SVG file from the Recipe Folio set from Lindsay’s Stamp Stuff. I was able to cut a folio big enough to hold six 5.5″x4.25″ cards and envelopes (5.75″x4.5″) on a 12″x12″ paper with room left on the sheet for a few tags too! You can make envelopes for the cards with the Envelope Bonanza set too to fit the box. The flourish on the front of the box was cut from the Storybook cricut cart.

To do the background on the white cards I used one of the wedding letterpress plate sets. See my post here on how to make your own letterpress and how to use it in your die cut machine. I used a rubber brayer and dye ink (SU! certainly celery) to ink my plate before cranking it through my Big shot. Note: You will need to use a thick soft printmaking paper for this to work, it will not work on regular cardstock because you will be denting {debossing} the paper. It will remain flat on the back unlike embossing.

To get the two-tone coloring on my stamped images I first inked up the Japanese Floral stamps from About Art Accents with Certainly Celery ink then rocked the edges in Old Olive ink before stamping, it is a great technique for stamps with a lot of solid area. It’s a time saver too!

For the green panels on the thank you cards I used the bamboo and thankyou plates from the kit and ran them through the machine without ink, then I used the same brayer and green ink to brayer over the design, notice how the ink does not go into the debossed design.

Gift card sets make great gifts and it is a nice way to try out some new supplies. After all, sometimes you just gotta get inky, right?

 

This set qualifies for the  Craftycardmakers challenges (card and gift set-this is a gift set of cards, it also qualifies for their card and fancy envelopes challenge)

Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!